Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Frankie Silver

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, Sheriff,” said a soft voice beside him.

He turned to find that Nora Bonesteel, one of the oldest parishioners, had slipped into the pew behind them. She was tall and straight in her blue church dress with the gray wool shawl draped over her shoulders. Her hair, still more dark than silver, was pulled back in two wings framing her face, and drawn into a knot at the back of her head. She touched his arm and he suddenly felt cold. “The poor in spirit,” he murmured, recognizing the Beatitudes. Miss Bonesteel had been his Sunday school teacher more years ago than either of them cared to remember. “For they shall see God.”

The old woman smiled and shook her head. “You never could keep those verses straight, could you? It’s: For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ”

He shrugged. “Well, I guess that’s why I didn’t see God.”

“What did you see?”

People told tales about Nora Bonesteel, though nobody ever said she wasn’t a good, righteous woman. She knew things, though. She saw things before they happened, and she had a way of knowing secret things no one would have dreamed of telling her. She didn’t exactly meddle in other people’s lives, but if you went to her for help, she always knew what it was you’d come about. The old folks claimed that Nora Bonesteel even talked to the dead, but Spencer could not let himself believe that, so he chose never to consider the matter at all. He had known her all his life.

What did you see?

“Frankie Silver.” He blurted it out before he thought better of it. Nora Bonesteel had always been able to get the truth out of him, even when he was a sullen teenager who passed the few minutes between Sunday school and church sneaking a cigarette in the back of the churchyard with some of the older boys. Nora Bonesteel had put a stop to that one spring morning without so much as a word passing between them.

Frankie Silver.

Anyone else might have said, “Who?” or, “You must have been dreaming!” Or they might have passed the remark off as a joke, but Nora Bonesteel did none of those things. She considered the matter for a moment and nodded slowly.

“I have heard that she walks,” she said. “Though I have never seen her myself. It’s not surprising, though, is it?”

“No?” He could not believe that he was having this conversation in broad daylight in the sanctuary of the little white church. The place was nearly empty now. His mother had walked toward the door to speak to some of her friends, so there was no one to overhear them.

“They say that those who die by violence often walk. Hers was a cruel death.”

“Do you know what really happened that night?”

Nora Bonesteel shook her head. “It’s not for me to say. But if you have seen her, she means to tell you something, Spencer. You’d best find out what it is.”

That night Spencer Arrowood sat in a circle of light at his dining room table with case-file papers and books of North Carolina history mingling in a pile in front of him. What was there about the Harkryder case that had reminded Nelse Miller of Frankie Silver? He couldn’t see it. He didn’t think Nelse had known the connection, either. It was a hunch of some sort that had never clarified itself in the old man’s mind. Spencer hadn’t taken much stock in such things in those days, but now, twenty years older and wiser, he believed that the intuition of an experienced cop could be counted as probable cause. If you lived long enough, you knew things just from instinct and observation.

By now Spencer had read all the material that the libraries could supply on the Silver case. Some of it was speculative, and most of it repetitive, but he had read it all, and the connection between the legend and the Harkryder boy still eluded him. When he looked at the Silver case as a lawman would, he could see why Constable Baker had no choice but to arrest Frankie Silver for the crime. The jury had no alternative, either. Since the grand jury had not indicted the Stewarts, they were offered no other suspects on whom to cast the blame. During the trial Frankie Silver had given no explanation for the fact that she had lied about Charlie’s whereabouts, or for the fact that his remains had been found in their own cabin. “Not guilty,” she said. Take it or leave it. They left it. Had to. He understood all that. But his instinct told him that there was something terribly wrong with the case. Eighteen-year-old girls do not kill without provocation, and they don’t cut up bodies.

He wondered what had really happened that night. Any explanation-no matter how lame-might have saved her, but she had sat there stone-faced and silent. Not guilty.

Lafayette Harkryder had done the same.

He had been given a court-appointed lawyer, not one as young as Nicholas Woodfin, but not much older, either. Perhaps the attorney had lacked the experience to mount a proper defense to the charges, but since the defendant had no money, he also lacked the resources necessary to generate reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury. No private investigators muddied the waters of evidence with favorable findings; no psychiatrists or forensic experts were employed by the defense to refute the state’s witnesses. Fate Harkryder had not even been able to afford a suit jacket and tie to impress the jury with his respectability. He had sat in court in a red plaid flannel shirt and gray work pants, looking all the more barbaric in contrast to the sleek attorneys in their dark suits and crisp, starched shirts.

All that was fine with the sheriff, provided the defendant was guilty. Sometimes the law needed all the help it could get to worm a conviction out of bleeding-heart juries, but he didn’t want to think that a man had been convicted of murder simply because he had violated the middle-class dress code. The penalty is greatest for breaking the laws that are unwritten.

Spencer pictured the courtroom. Fate in his worn plaid shirt, and his nervous young attorney, correct but bland, and himself in his brown deputy sheriff’s uniform. Colonel Stanton had been almost as conspicuous as the lawyers in Wake County’s little courtroom. He had understood the symbols of society’s unwritten laws. He sat there day after day, ramrod straight, immaculate in his dress uniform, with every ribbon and medal on prominent display: the picture of solemn grief demanding justice. His wife was beside him most of the time, in a little suit and hat that would not have been out of place at a funeral or a church service. She had seemed a bit embarrassed to be there, blushing when anyone spoke to her and never looking at the defendant or the jury, but Colonel Stanton watched the proceedings with the alert gaze of a director viewing the dress rehearsal of the play. He took in everything, nodding when he agreed, and scowling when he did not. He took care to sit where the jury could not fail to see him, and perhaps because of his impressive looks and his air of command, they did seem to be watching him, testing their own reaction to a witness’s testimony by checking Stanton’s expression for approval.

What about the other victim’s parents, Spencer thought. He tried to picture them in the courtroom, but the image would not be summoned. The Wilsons were elderly. They had come to court at least twice, Spencer knew, because he remembered speaking to them in the hall, but they were simple country people, and they had been overshadowed by the elegant Stantons.

Outside the courtroom, Charles Wythe Stanton had also been in command. He radiated confidence, and dignified outrage over his daughter’s death. He was always ready to be photographed for the newspaper or to provide a sound bite for the television newsmen, and he would offer each reporter a poignant snapshot of pretty Emily. “She must not be forgotten,” he would say with a moist smile. “This trial is not just about that monster in there. It is about what Emily deserves, too, in exchange for her life.”